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Expo depicts life history of Nehru

It has plenty of pictures from his early days as student, Congress worker and Prime Minister

INFORMATIVE: Foreigners looking at photos at the exhibition in the city. — Photo: G. Moorthy.

: A photo exhibition on Independent India's first Prime Minister and one of the architects of modern India, Jawaharlal Nehru, is under way at the Gandhi Memorial Museum here.

It has a series of pictures starting from his early days as student, Congress worker and Prime Minister.

The early day's pictures include Jawaharlal Nehru as a student at Harrow School in England at the age of 15, as a cadet in the school, as a graduate in Cambridge in 1910 and Nehru performing Shirsasana Yoga.

Nehru at the Lucknow Congress Session in 1936, walking along with another legend and in fact his mentor, Mohandas Gandhi at Wardhwa in 1939, Nehru speaking at a rally in Trafalgar Square in support of the Republican cause in Spanish Civil War, 1938, a picture in which he is seen with Krishna Menon and Indira Gandhi and Nehru presenting the National Flag to the Constituent Assembly are seen.

The second set of pictures includes Nehru who could be seen alongside eminent Indian leaders and his contemporaries. Pictures of Nehru with Subhas Chandra Bose, Vinoba Bhave, Jayaprakash Narayan, C. Rajagopalachari, Vallabhbhai Patel, Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

A picture of Nehru taking oath as the Prime Minister of India on August 15, 1947 (one of the most important events in the history of Modern South Asia) is also on display.

A modernist with an international outlook and a committed socialist, Nehru was one of the founders of the Non-aligned Movement.

He was also an important figure in the international politics of the post-war era and maintained a good relationship with world leaders. This exhibition gives us a chance to visualize that as Nehru could be seen with famous leaders like Nikita Khruschev of the erstwhile Soviet Union, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Cuban revolutionary and President Fidel Castro, Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr and Correta King. Marshall Tito, De Gaulle Emperor Hirohita, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Queen Elizabeth.

Nehru had an immense zest for life, with a wide range of interests; he always sought the companionship of authors, artists and intellectuals, he admired children and loved nature.

His friends include playwright George Bernard Shaw and historian Arnold Toynbee and their pictures are also kept in the exhibition. A few lighter moments like the Statesman feeding a deer at Nava National Park in Japan, caressing a tiger cub, playing badminton, dancing along with folk dancers in Garhwal and tribal dancers also form part of the collection.

The pictures of Nehru in Tamil Nadu are interesting; the collection has Nehru with former Chief Ministers C. Rajagopalachari, Bhaktavachalam and K. Kamaraj. Workers of Seva Dal welcoming him in Madurai and congress leaders here like Soundaram Ramachandran and N.M.R. Subburaman could be seen with him in a picture and Nehru signing on the visitors' book at Gandhi Museum library are also there.

The final set of pictures includes Nehru's demise and the funeral rally.